SHE worked as an ancillary/messenger worker, sold peanuts, coconut ‘drops’ and pudding, while also strategically throwing ‘partner’ to fund her children’s education. She did all this while living in Trench Town as a single parent whose main goal was to take care of her four boys.

Now 68 years old, Executive Director of HEART Trust/National Training Agency Dr Wayne Wesley’s mother Mary White is a proud woman.

“I work for 28 years, three months and two weeks and all my wages, my salary, I spent on them,” White told the Jamaica Observer in a recent interview. “I am a proud mother today, I can lift my hands and thank God that I am a proud mother.

“They never put me in any trouble to pay money for them, they just cooperate with me,” said White.

Dr Wesley has been at the helm of HEART Trust/NTA since February 2013. He joined the organisation in 2009 as the national programmes director before moving on to become the chief technical director with responsibility for the development and execution of the organisation’s strategic priorities. He is now the organisation’s executive director. Dr Wesley also provides regional leadership in workforce development in his capacity as chairman of the Caribbean Association of National Training Agencies (CANTA).

“I am feeling very proud to know that he grew up without a father and to know that I was the one who really stood by him and had laid the foundation that he could accomplish so many things,” shared White.

The Sunday Observer sat down with Dr Wesley recently and he told this newspaper that he never considered himself to be a bright boy while growing up, in fact, he wasn’t even able to read.

“I think all persons are born with an innate talent to do well and for some reason, those talents can be slowed. I am a product of a single-parent home, up to this day I don’t know who my father is,” Wesley recalled. “So, it was my mother who sought to ensure that I received an education that allowed me to break, as persons normally say, the cycle of poverty in my family.

“I can recall I was unable to read and I oftentimes say to people that I really learnt to read in Sunday School… because in the Sunday School class, when you get there, the scripture lesson for the day, everybody must read at least one verse… and it was at that time I realised I really didn’t have the ability to read,” Dr Wesley said.

The executive director recounted the moment, though embarrassing, that motivated him to learn to read.

“[While reading] … when I reached the word ‘stone’, I actually said ‘St one’… it almost flowed in the sentence,” Dr Wesley explained. “The reason I did that was because I was accustomed to saying ‘St John’ and I saw “St”, so I recognised ‘St’ and I recognised ‘one’.

“Everybody laughed at me in the class, but I learnt the word ‘stone’ that day, and I can never forget it,” he insisted.

Dr Wesley told the Sunday Observer that he had difficulties while attending John Mills All-age School. In fact, he failed the Common Entrance and it was not until he sat the technical entrance examination that he was able to advance to St Andrew Technical High School, the institution at which he said he began to excel.

“I remember my mother tying me to the bed in Trench Town and saying ‘you’re not going out on the road’, and she would leave books and say ‘you must read, learn to read’, and she would teach me what she could,” Dr Wesley recounted.

He said, having now learnt to read, he passed the technical entrance exam but still had some problems.

“At the time, I had a problem with my hearing, so I visited the ear, nose and throat clinic,” Dr Wesley explained. “I had to do surgery to take care of whatever was happening.

“I think after the surgery it made a difference because perhaps the difficulty in hearing sort of prevented me from really understanding what was being said in class. But after that it really made a difference and I recognised that I really needed to take this book thing seriously and then I started,” shared Dr Wesley.

At STATHS, though he struggled with the English language, he was the top male student for all the years he attended the institution. He even went on to become the deputy head boy.

Dr Wesley said that even then he didn’t think of himself as a bright boy. However, when the school’s principal, SW Isaac-Henry, called him to his office one day and told him he was “naturally bright”, he really started taking stock of his abilities.

“I asked him what he meant by that, he said ‘because of the ease with which you do certain things and how you behave and carry yourself, you are naturally bright and you need to continue’,” Dr Wesley recalled. “At that time, I still saw myself as perhaps just like an ordinary student doing whatever, but I think that helped changed my perspective as well.”

Dr Wesley now holds a Bachelor of Education in Industrial Technology from the University of Technology (UTech), where he lectured for 16 years before joining the HEART Trust/NTA team, a Master of Science in Manufacturing Systems from Southern Illinois University, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Industrial Engineering from Florida State University. He has also successfully completed executive education programmes at Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Manchester Business School, as well as a postgraduate diploma in Financial Services Management and he possesses a level eight certificate in Strategic Direction and Leadership from the Chartered Management Institute in the United Kingdom.

Dr Wesley is a trained and experienced educator, a trained and experienced engineer, and a trained and experienced executive. This he said he could not have achieved without his mother.

“My mother was very instrumental because she always said to me ‘Wayne you didn’t born with a gold spoon in your mouth and education is the only way out’,” Dr Wesley told the Sunday Observer. “When I look back at the days when she used to tie me to the bed and say ‘stay in the house’, I realise it was for my own good. Because, right now, a lot of my friends who I normally play with in Trench Town, those days, were dying around me.

“In Trench Town you were exposed to the guns, you were exposed to the drugs, you were exposed to all sorts of things just moving around in the inner-city,” Dr Wesley continued. “But I think what happened to me, I was grounded in the church somewhat, so the church really helped to mould and shape my character, so I didn’t get wayward.”

“If I am to go back to my development from STATHS to UTech, the sacrifice of my mom, I cannot overemphasise the sacrifice of my mom,” Dr Wesley stressed. “She was working at the Institute of Jamaica at the time as an ancillary/messenger worker. So, at times when she is not delivering messages around, she would be wiping the floor and keeping the floor clean. But she was an entrepreneur at heart.”

The CANTA chairman said that his mother did everything to ensure that their education was funded. He said he attended UTech on her “back”.

“I remember the drops, I remember the peanut cake, I remember the pudding, the potato, the ‘suck-suck’. I had to be going to the bakery with the peanut, to bake the peanut to come back and have it shell out and sometimes you don’t even want students at school see you selling any,” chuckling, Dr Wesley said. “But, it was how she managed to make enough to send us to school. I also remember her engaging in ‘partner’, and every time you just don’t understand when you’re going to school how the funding would be available to pay your school fee.”

“Her entrepreneurial activities and toiling really helped to finance us going to school… I went to UTech (previously the College of Agriculture, Science and Technology) on the back of my mother and that is why right now, my salary, the first thing that comes out is what my mother is to get,” Dr Wesley insisted. “I make sure that she gets that every month, because right now, I see myself as her pension.”

Dr Wesley insisted that getting to where he is right now has not been all work and no play. After he completed his bachelor’s degree he married Joy, and over the years they have had three children — Jowayne, Jowaynah and Jowesann. He explained that their names are a combination of his wife’s first name, Joy, and his, Wayne.

“Family is very important and spending time with family members is also critical. Sometimes family is what keeps you grounded,” Dr Wesley reasoned.

His other siblings have also done well academically. They all attended STATHS, and except for one who died in an accident in 2002, they have all attained at least a bachelor’s degree from UTech.

“They have all passed their exams and they went to St Andrew Technical and they did a degree at UTech, and they have graduated now and are working,” said an obviously proud White. “But they have to go back and do their Masters.”

Dr Wesley was quick to point out that his mother did everything for them.

“If I were to point to the single most influential factor, outside of Christ being in my life, that has caused me to reach where I am and to accomplish what I have been able to, it is Mary White,” said the beaming son. “The fact is my mother did not benefit from any solid education herself, but she made sure that all of her sons went to university.”

The man at the helm of HEART Trust/NTA said he is committed to “fostering the development of a nation through education and training”, which is the fundamental principle to which he subscribes. He said that he has seen first-hand that development was possible through education.

“Growing up in Trench Town you had to have an understanding of the street. The socialisation about camaraderie and learning to survive in situations that are already stacked against you,” he declared. “That experience of seeing first-hand what poverty is like. We were living in tenement yards with how many families sharing bathrooms, sharing kitchens, even today some of that structure still exists.

“But all that time I still had to survive, I still had to make sure that I became someone. So it is the condition of trying to make it… And the struggle of what my mother had to go through,” said Dr Wesley.

“Many days you will wake up with bullets dropping on the rooftops and you just hear the firing of gunshots in the community all around you, sometimes you wake up and you’re surrounded by police,” he recounted about his life growing up in Trench Town. “But those struggles really helped to shape my character… it also gave you this fighting spirit because only the fittest of the fittest would survive and if any at all you do not exert yourself in a particular way, you are going to be shafted,” he said.

His mother also recounted that it was not easy, and that her brothers and sisters helped when they could, but she knew she had to do what was necessary so her children could get the best.

“It was not easy but, by God’s grace, I was able to make it with the four boys,” said White. “When I go to work in the days I let them know, I don’t stop them from playing, but make sure they take up their books.

“I don’t shame to talk, sometimes when we go to church, him cannot kneel down because the shoes bottom gone, so him kneel on one foot and make the other one kind of stand stand up, because the bottom of the shoes gone and mi never have it to give them,” said White. “And anything I gave them they would be satisfied.

“When Christmas come I make sure I have a money that I can look after them. Buy them clothes, shoes, because you know at Christmas, everybody in new things, so I make sure to look after them and I wear the old ones,” said White.

“You know what, I am so glad to know that I gave them a good foundation. So, laying the foundation it is good, but for them to keep it up, is another thing,” White reasoned.

She said her children were not troublemakers and if they did give trouble, it was never in her sight.

“He is a tower of strength for me, not he alone though, every one of them,” said the proud mother. “He doesn’t even want me to do what I used to do, him say I mustn’t do it. I used to do a little hustling, sell juices, bun and cheese, drops, and peanuts, he says I mustn’t do it because I have done enough and sent them to school, so now is the time for me to rest.”

Dr Wesley told the Sunday Observer that his job as executive director of HEART Trust/NTA is hectic and sometimes overwhelming, but when the goals of the organisation, with the support of the staff, are achieved, it is rewarding.

So what’s next for Dr Wesley?

“I am passionate about anything that facilitates national development… so, the sky is the limit,” he said.